CHAPTER 7:

"Northern" NGOs: Perpetuating Neoimperialism

and Dependency

The East African geography is riddled with the complexities of an exploitative and extractive colonial and postcolonial history that has served "Northern" interests of economic growth, technological innovation, and socioeconomic domination worldwide. In Kenya and Tanzania, the effects of this dependency relationship on the indigenous people and on the natural resources and wildlife have been disastrous. The sustainability of traditional societies and natural resource management strategies, and the intricacies of East African biodiversity, have been exchanged for a capitalist framework of resource extraction and economic expansion that has been increasingly degradative of the environment and impoverishing of the people. The damaging results of this process are evidenced everywhere. The biodiversity and soil richness of coastal forests in Tanzania are being destroyed at an alarming rate as governmental programs stress the importance of expansion into new markets and ecosystems without offering sustainable land-use strategies for the impoverished communities living in the forests (Sheil, 1992). The Kenyan government encourages rural farmers to produce cash crops such as wheat on fragile, semi-arid lands but offers no long-term options when the soil is degraded and the land is a lifeless expanse of eroded topsoil (a situation I witnessed often near the Maasai Mara National Reserve on the border of Kenya and Tanzania). The colonial model of national parks and reserves as "cultured persons' playgrounds...protecting nature from the natives" (Marekia, 1991: 157) has been perpetuated by the postcolonial governmental priorities on foreign investment and capitalist growth; ecotourism is a main GNP earner for Kenya and Tanzania, and presents a number of disconcerting parallels to the colonial parks model. Indigenous peoples such as pastoralist groups who have managed the resources of the Maasai Mara, Amboseli National Park, Mt. Kenya National Park, or Chyulu National Park for centuries, are denied access into the interior of reserves and are denied access to the parks altogether, in the interests of preserving the "wildness" of the conservation areas (that the pastoralists helped shape) to encourage higher economic returns from ecotourist activities in East Africa. The only people who are generally allowed to visit the parks and reserves are tourists from Europe, Australia, America, and Asia, perpetuating the British colonial model of conservation areas as "royal preserves" for the wealthy. In addition, local people are denied the economic benefits of ecotourism which are hoarded by safari companies and travel organizations operating centrally out of "Northern" countries. The East African parks and reserves models fundamentally favor the perpetuation of a globalized capitalist economy - and of privileged, "Northern" tourists who can afford to enjoy the splendor of Kenyan and Tanzanian parks as "cultured persons' playgrounds" - at the expense of the self-sustainability of local peoples and resources, deepening dependency dynamics that can only serve to negatively impact East African social and ecological systems.

The negative impacts of East African modernization and capitalist "development" are manifested in other ways as well, including: the siltation and damming of rivers; toxic and waste dumping in coastal waters; unchecked air pollution in urban centers; water sanitation problems throughout the region; deforestation of tropical areas; the endangering and extinction of numerous animal and plant species; the gendered alienation of women in rural communities; and the continuing alienation of pastoralists, nomads, and hunters and gatherers from land management and development policy decisions. The neo-colonial and capitalist ethics representing "Northern" interests continue to be exploitative and destructive in the East African context.

But not all "Northern" involvement is intended to be dominating, exploitative, and destructive. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and volunteer organizations centered in the U.S., Germany, Denmark, and other Western European countries have made strong efforts to combat impoverishment and degradation in the East Africa Region through the implementation of a wide variety of programs and work projects. During my explorations of Kenya and Tanzania for 4 months this spring, I saw numerous examples of NGO involvement in East Africa - including wells and water pumps constructed to provide rural communities with clean water, sanitation and vaccination projects in rural communities, reforestation programs in degraded landscapes, and literacy programs for children and adults in rural and urban areas. Vivian (1994) explains that increasingly, NGOs and volunteer organizations have become the most popular options for development and conservation strategies that provide working alternatives to the alienating models of national parks and reserves administered by the state and for the economic growth and expansion of the state. "It is generally assumed that NGOs work with the 'grassroots' - that they are better than other agencies at reaching isolated people in isolated communities, and at addressing the problems of the 'poorest of the poor'" (Vivian, 1994: 183). However, Vivian (1994) argues that the stereotypical image of NGOs as representatives of poor people needs to be reconsidered, because closer observation of many NGO projects reveals, most often, partial successes or outright failures of the projects to represent the interests of rural communities and to encourage self-sustainability of the development and conservation schemes, after the narrow time frame of project dates has passed. According to Vivian (1994), NGOs are only able to provide services to poverty-stricken and degraded communities in East Africa based on donor funding. NGOs are often hampered by unrealistic donor expectations of short-term success stories and miracle solutions to systemic environmental and socioeconomic problems, that limit the ultimate effectiveness of NGOs in implementing alternative conservation and development strategies. Vivian's (1994) observations are significant, not only because they deconstruct some of the traditional obstacles to NGO effectiveness in "Southern" countries, but because they suggest that some of the failures of NGOs to provide lasting solutions are implicit in the "Northern" value systems and capitalist agendas that donor funding - and NGO operations as well - are organized around. The "magic bullet" expectations of donors are based on economic pressures imposed upon the NGOs to provide "success stories" that will generate capital and renown for the donors. The underlying assumption of NGO projects is based on donor assessments of the capacity of the NGOs to provide quick and easy development models that are profitable to the donors. This dynamic reinforces the capitalist drive for economic growth and expansion, even if this proves destructive and antidevelopmental for the people and environmental resources affected by these decisions, as it regularly does for rural, East African communities involved with "quick fix-it" NGO models.

NGO ineffectiveness, despite the best of intentions, is also based fundamentally on the "Northern" biases and ideologies framing project expectations and strategies. The "alternatives" to governmental models that NGOs represent, often remain mired in the same destructive and paternalistic attitudes and ideologies that keep governmental programs from truly representing and empowering the interests of the East African people and environment.

An example from my experiences in East Africa will serve to illustrate this point more clearly. In the Laikipia region of northern Kenya is a region called Samburuland peopled by the Samburu pastoralists, where I stayed for several weeks this spring. Sitting on top of a large mountainous outcrop of rock in Samburuland called Naibor Kejo, I could see the whole of Samburuland and the pastoral settlements contained therein, spread out before me. One of the Samburu elders, Leamu, pointed to agricultural fields, a small metallic house shining with the reflected rays of the sun, and a good-sized watering hole for people and livestock , scattered on the valley floor of Samburuland below. Leamu stared at these for a moment and then proceeded to explain why he and other Samburu elders were frustrated by the presence of fields and metallic houses in Samburuland. According to Leamu, these represented the attempts of American and European NGOs to provide "modernization" projects benefiting the Samburu people. However, he explained that the "development" programs instituted by the (primarily German) NGOs had not involved enough involvement of indigenous perspectives, and had been based on an inadequate understanding of pastoralist interactions with the East African environment. Although the metallic houses provided more lasting and stable shelters than traditional housing, they were expensive to build and were ultimately useless because they could not be deconstructed and taken with the Samburu when drought forced seasonal migrations with the livestock. The production of agricultural crops in Samburuland to stimulate economic development, was similarly riddled with problems because the semi-arid landscape of Samburuland made the cultivation of crops nearly impossible. Leamu pointed to the watering hole and explained that it had been created by a damming project instituted by a German NGO. Although it was definitely useful as a water source, it was also failure-prone. The dam was constantly breaking because the Germans had misjudged the amount of water that the area received and had constructed the dam poorly for long-term use, based on an inadequate understanding of the environmental dynamics of the semi-arid region and a failure to rely enough on indigenous knowledge and experience with the area.

Leamu's observations are extremely valuable because they illustrate some of the failure-prone tendencies of rural, East African NGOs organized by "Northern" interests. The German NGOs' efforts in Samburuland had limited success because they were based on a conception of "modernization" that was inapplicable and ineffective within the human-environmental dynamics of Samburu lifestyles. The damming project, the housing, and the introduction of crop cultivation responded to donor expectations of quick, short-term solutions that failed to be useful and effective for the Samburu in the long-term. The lack of indigenous involvement and consultation in organizing the projects limited the ability of the projects to overcome "Northern" ignorance and misunderstanding of the social and ecological dynamics of the semi-arid region. All of these failings in the NGO projects are traceable to a paternalistic, "modernization"-centered "Northern" philosophy that proved antithetical to meaningful and sustainable developments in the lives of the Samburu. Vivian (1994) identifies these problems with NGO operations in rural, African communities (in Zimbabwe) as well. A paternalistic attitude disregarding native knowledge, a lack of participation-oriented programs, and a curbing of the radically innovative potentials of NGO projects by donor expectations in favor of a model of cheap, short-term involvement with rural communities, have all failed to create lasting alternatives to the degrading and impoverishing governmental models of "conservation" and "development." Because NGOs have traditionally relied upon "Northern" biases and conceptions of capitalist modernization, and have been constricted by "Northern" donor expectations of short-term projects that focus on economic development rather than the long-term sustainability of social and ecological processes, NGOs have failed to provide real alternatives to the capitalist dependency relationships perpetuated by colonial and imperialist exploitation of East Africa. On the contrary, NGO activities have tended to reproduce this dependency by approaching the issues of development and conservation from a decidedly-"Northern" perspective of "modernization" and neo-colonialism.

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